Transcribed , email ccx074@coventry.ac.uk
Contents: {0}
OnBio-Geology
The Study of Natural History
Superstition
Science
Thoughtsin a Gravel-Pit
How to Study Natural History
TheNatural Theology of the Future
I am not sure that the subject of my address is rightly chosen. I am not sure that I ought not to have postponed a question of merenatural history, to speak to you as scientific men, on the questionsof life and death, which have been forced upon us by the awful warningof an illustrious personage’s illness; of preventible disease,its frightful prevalency; of the 200,000 persons who are said to havedied of fever alone since the Prince Consort’s death, ten yearsago; of the remedies; of drainage; of sewage disinfection and utilisation;and of the assistance which you, as a body of scientific men, can giveto any effort towards saving the lives and health of our fellow-citizensfrom those unseen poisons which lurk like wild beasts couched in thejungle, ready to spring at any moment on the unsuspecting, the innocent,the helpless. Of all this I longed to speak; but I thought itbest only to hint at it, and leave the question to your common senseand your humanity; taking for granted that your minds, like the mindsof all right-minded Englishmen, have been of late painfully awakenedto its importance. It seemed to me almost an impertinence to saymore in a city of whose local circumstances I know little or nothing. As an old sanitary reformer, practical, as well as theoretical, I ambut too well aware of the difficulties which beset any complete schemeof drainage, especially in an ancient city like this; where men arepaying the penalty of their predecessors’ ignorance; and dwelling,whether they choose or not, over fifteen centuries of accumulated dirt.
And, therefore, taking for granted that there is energy and intellectenough in Winchester to conquer these difficulties in due time, I goon to ask you to consider, for a time, a subject which is growing moreand more important and interesting, a subject the study of which willdo much towards raising the field naturalist from a mere collector ofspecimens—as he was twenty years ago—to a philosopher elucidatingsome of the grandest problems. I mean the infant science of Bio-geology—thescience which treats of the distribution of plants and animals overthe globe, and the cause of that distribution.
I doubt not that there are many here who know far more about thesubject than I; who are far better read than I am in the works of Forbes,Darwin, Wallace, Hooker, Moritz Wagner, and the other illustrious menwho have written on it. But I may, perhaps, give a few hints whichwill be of use to the younger members of this Society, and will pointout to them how to get a new relish for the pursuit of field science.
Bio-geology, then, begins with asking every plant or animal you meet,large or small, not merely—What is your name? That is thecollector and classifier’s duty; and a most necessary duty itis, and one to be performed with the most conscientious patience andaccuracy, so that a sound foundation may be built for future speculations. But young naturalists should act not merely as Nature’s registrarsand census-takers, but as her policemen and gamekeepers; and ask everythingthey meet—How did you get there? By what road did you come? What was your last place of abode? And now you are